


Handfasting and Pulling Thread

by alephthirteen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: All Politics is Personal, Characters as You've Never Seen Them Before, Damaged Bellatrix, Dark(ish) Harry, Dark(ish) Hermione, F/F, F/M, Introvert Narcissa, Or do they?, Pureblood Families are as Weird as European Royalty Was, Sirius Black as a Pup, Starting Hogwarts Late, Teenagers and Time Turners Do Not Mix, The Real Weapon is Knowledge, parallel timelines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:08:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28338213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen
Summary: The knock on the master bedroom's door behind her makes her tremble.  No!  His cronies were sent away!  She needs time to cover her tracks!"Bels?  You all right?"The door creaks open and a slender brown-eyed witch stands in it.  Her hair is a seemingly endless river of nut-brown shine, braided with some locks of Bella's wavy black.  She doesn't have time to open her arms before a whimpering Bella's inside them, tucking her head under her chin and disappearing into the lean, sinewy circle of Hermione's arms."Did he touch you?"Bella spits on the still-steaming pile of shredded flesh."Shh," her lover whispers, smoothing her wild curls with a gentle hand.  "I'm here, Bels.  I am so proud of you...""Keep me safe, 'mione."-----One of the ruined bookshelves crashes behind her, shattering.  She asked the boys to help her salvage the library."Harry!" Hermione hollers.  "Ron!""Wot?" Ron asks, though he had the courtesy to chew.Of course he'd have 'salvaged' the kitchen first.Harry joins her."Harry," she asks.  "Ever seenTerminator 2orBack to the Future?"
Relationships: Harry Potter/Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Lestrange/Narcissa Black Malfoy, Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Narcissa Black Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 26
Kudos: 98





	1. Terrible Ideas Bucket List

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Hermione can think on her feet and Harry's job is to shut up, eat powerful women out in their office and hope this works out all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I set out to write this because I wanted to write a time-travel story and was thinking of writing some utter trash, like Bellamione or Black Sisters smut. Then I realized that merging those two brainstorms let me make a non-rapey Bellamione story and that's when it became this sort of "kill the bad guy as a baby" lunacy.

**Devonshire, England - June 8, 1966 - Riddle Manor**

The knock on the bedroom's door behind her makes her tremble. 

No! His cronies were sent away! She needs time to cover her tracks!

For one thing, a dead body is _heavier_ than she'd expected and the bitch kicked like a mule. Dragging her over to Voldemort's bed after knocking both out was exhausting.

After the struggle for the wand, the kidnapped whore from Knockturn fought the Imperius curse longer than Bella could have believed before breaking. Even reversed it, trying to take Bella over instead. Without her fiancee's tender tutoring, Bella's sure she would have broken. 

With llegimancy, the tidier mind wins. Bella transfigured her and pushed as much of her own pain and fear as she could before pouring enough lust potion down her body-double's throat to kill an elephant.

She was nobody special but wearing a face she trusted and hopped up on temporary might, the wretch killed Voldemort with her fingernails and teeth, smearing his blood on her tits as she rode.

"Bels? You all right?"

"Hermione!"

The door creaks open and a slender witch stands in it. Her hair is glossy, seemingly endless river of nut-brown and her eyes an inhuman, glowing crimson. Terrifying to others but Bella sees only the smile that reaches up to them. 

She doesn't have time to open her arms before Bella's inside them, tucking her head under her chin and disappearing into the sinewy circle of the older witch's arms. The dark magic in her body is bottomless and pure. Scalpel sharp. Never wavering, overspilling or misfiring like Bellatrix's own. Hermione hurts exactly those she means to and hurts them exactly as much as she means to. She only hurts those who hurt Bellatrix.

"Did he touch you?"

Bella spits on the still-steaming pile of shredded flesh.

"No."

"Shh," her lover breathes. "I'm here, my little wildcat. I am so proud of you..."

"Keep me safe," she whines.

"Always."

She grabs one of the hands that had been soothing her and drives it between her thighs, plunging it through her swollen folds and pushing until they both can feel the barrier.

"He didn't," she promises. "Feel? Still there for you..."

Her beloved knocks their foreheads playfully together.

"Shh. Don't be scared. What I'm worried about," Hermione whispers, moving the hand up to Bella's breast. A finger finds a racing vein and presses gently. "Is if you saved _this_ for me."

* * *

**London, England - June 9, 1966 **

In a dingy home in London, a harried woman with her wand tucked into a pair off muggle overalls picks up the _London Times_ and dispels the charm to reveal the _Daily Prophet_.

**DARK WIZARD DEAD IN LOVER'S SPAT! UNKNOWN WITCHES SEEN LEAVING BURNING MANOR! WHO ARE THEY?**

The picture shows a stately country house engulfed in flame with two witches silhouetted, one a statuesque amazon in leather trousers carrying the other bridal-style as the flames shine through her torn nightgown.

"Heh," Andromeda chuckles. "Unknown witch my fanny. Only one witch alive with hair that messy." 

The child in her belly tumbles gleefully. Either Ted's been slipping her gut-stretching potions or the little one's an metamorphmagus. No matter what, her gymnastics don't hurt her mother. 

"Yes, Nymmy. That's your auntie..."

Smirking, she waves at the vanishing taillights of the Dawn Lorry as it speeds to its next stop.

She's going to wake her husband for her I'm-pregnant-it's-your-fault-so-shag-me ritual and then tell him all about it.

Fuck the statue of secrecy. Ted's going to love this story.

* * *

**Hogwarts -- 1998 -- the day it all changed.**  
  
One of the ruined bookshelves crashes behind her, splintering. 

She asked the boys to help her salvage the library but really she needed to see it one last time before the building collapsed.

"Harry!" Hermione hollers. "Ron!" 

"Wot?" Ron asks, though he had the courtesy to chew. Too late for her sake but Lavender will appreciate it now that she and 'won-won' have reconnected. Of course he'd have salvaged the kitchen first. 

Harry joins them, rolling the body of one of Greyback's pack out of the way with a broom.

"Harry," she asks. "Ever seen _Terminator 2_ or _Back to the Future_?"

"No. Dursleys didn't believe in fun."

"God!" she huffs. "You're no fun. Some muggleborn best friend."

"READ!" she chortles, slapping the back issues down.

"What're we reading, Hermione?"

She stabs a finger into one the articles.

"Narcissa Black and Bellatrix Black. Two of the worst."

"And?"

"RON!" Hermione hisses. 

"Oh," he says, blushing.

Harry picks up the paper.

"Scandal in an ancient house," he reads. "Black sisters sent to Saint Dessica's Center for Overly Sexed Young Witches. Marriage contracts to be announced shortly and enforced upon release."

"Bloody hell. You suppose..."

"I think that two pureblood girls with a dad so scary no one would touch them got curious with the only people who would touch them got caught, ended up marrying to the worst possible people as a result."

"Just think, Harry. Ron. Sorry. Harry and Ron. Bellatrix falls in love with old Noseless at some point after she marries Rudolphus Lestrange. I haven't found any evidence Narcissa was a step-on-me terror of the night until _long after Draco was born._ "

"Bellatrix gets us close," Harry muses. "Mediwitches who did the autopsy said she was pregnant. Not the first time, either. Knock her out and take him when he's vulnerable, maybe. Suppose even he's tried after a shag. Even just stopping Cissy's engagement would hurt Voldemort immensely by making Malfoy irrelevant."

"That's vile!" Ron grumbles. "Those two? Bellatrix, with her weird..."

He makes a series of hard-to-decode gestures around his own imaginary breasts and then pretends to claw his own face.

"And Narcissa, with the..."

He draws himself up straight and puts his hands on hips that in Hermione's estimation have _zero_ comparison to Narcissa's amazing curves, tossing his hair back and trying to look disdainful.

"Yes," Harry mumbles, cheeks pink. "Vile."

"Absolutely _hideous_ ," Hermione sighs.

"Harry!" Hermione teases, smacking him with the newspaper. "Cissy?"

The boy who lived becomes the Boy-Who-Blushed.

"Just checking on the wounded..."

_Sure, Harry. The wounded widows under house arrest with deep, sad eyes, a tiny cut on a forehead, thirty years of sexual frustration, a taste for raw magical power and curves to disappear in._

"Don't get it," Ron mumbles.

"Let's go stop it before it starts!" Hermione exclaims.

Hermione grabs her best friend's hand.

"If this works, name one after each of us!" Harry jokes.

"We'll leave a note with Tonks!" Hermione promises.

"But she's..."

They apparate out.

"Dead?" Ron asks himself in an empty library.

Lavender finds Ron in the library some time later. The cut on her face is still raw and she can barely speak through her ravaged throat. Parvati--always good with fashion--suggested a few additional cuts and adding some black-and-red dye in the shape of ancient runes. Make it look purposeful. Lavender being Lavender, she overdid it, runically scarring herself head-to-toe. When it heals, she'll be the scariest, punkest-looking witch on the Holyhead Harpy's quidditch pitch. 

She throws her arms around him from behind.

"Hey," she croaks.

She ruffles his hair and breathes deep.

"Smell good," she wheezes.

"Dorms," she growls, taking his ear in her quite-sharp teeth.

Lavender flicks her wand at the lamp to extinguish it. In the dark, books flow back onto shelves as they right themselves. Graffiti carved by bored hands vanishes and replaced with different vandalism by different hands.

By dawn, Ron and Lavender are settling down to take their NEWTs in Defense Against the Dark Arts with Professor Nymphadora Tonks. 

After that is Potions with Delphini Black, the infamous Witch-Who-Was-Born-Twice, reformed dark sorceress, discarded daughter of the Dark Lord and adopted daughter of Lady Hermione Black-Garnier, minister of magic.

Lavender doesn't even remember how she got the bite anymore and Ron isn't exactly complaining that his already-randy girlfriend goes positively mental a couple days a month. That's what stamina potions are for. 

Ginny thinks it's hilarious her brother found a woman even more fond of sausage and bacon than he is.

* * *

**London - May 11, 1966**

Hermione starts their save-the-world plan by making Harry keep watch while she breaks a shop window, steals a fluffy pink sweater, wide white leather belt, several miniskirts, t-shirts for rock bands that look like they were sized for a stuffed animal, and three leather jackets.

She slithers out of her clothes in an alley a few blocks away from the break in and starts changing.

"You can look," she chuckles. "I fancied you, just like half the Gryffindors. Bag, please."

She drops--in sequence--her bra, knickers, jeans and sweater, her robes, the shoes she was wearing and then for some reason, pulls three condoms, a bottle of lube and an egg-shaped vibrator out of the bag.

"How is it?"

Harry turns around. This cannot be Hermione. She messed her hair with her fingers so it looks like she just rolled out of bed--someone else's bed--and she crammed herself into the Rolling Stones shirt in a way that makes her already tempting tits practically magnetic to the eye, especially given the rip she put in the collar show off her cleavage. She tore it off again just under her breasts, giving him a peek at the pale skin of her ribcage. Her milky skin becomes a spooky silver color in the hissing tungsten shine of the streetlights.

The leather jacket is unbuttoned and the belt dangles around her hips lopsidedly.

He knows for a bloody _fact_ she's not wearing knickers because she didn't ask him to hand her any.

"You all right, luv?" she asks, diving into a Cockney accent no suburban daughter of rich dentists would ever have. She presses her hand to his crotch.

"Wozzis? Nothing fer me? There something wrong with yer tackle?" she teases.

"Nope!" he yelps.

"Just getting into character."

"You look...amazing. Why?"

"Have to look like a rock and roll slag," she explains. "I picked this date for a reason, not just because it was as far as the time-turner 13-year-old-me was using could reach. Back then..."

She pinches her nipples, one after the other, making them stand out through the fabric.

"Slut, slag, whatever...it was a particular look. Not just..."

She grins.

"...a state of mind."

"Why do you need to look like this?"

"Plan. Taxi!" Hermione shouts, rather than answering.

Worried she will fall, he grabs her belt and anchors her to the sidewalk as she leans out, hair tumbling and skin shining like a beacon. He's half surprised that four different taxis don't crash into each other trying to answer her outstretched hand. 

"This is mad," Harry mumbles. "You said this plan involves time turners, robbing the Minister of Magic's office, Bellatrix and Narcissa's dad, breaking into a mental institution..."

"...and swapping bodies."

"WHAT?"

"Harry," Hermione sighs, in the way he does when he's not getting a perfectly simple concept. "We don't belong here. We're safe for a few days because neither of our parents knows the other one exists. Your dad is what, six?"

Harry counts in his head.

"About, yeah."

"And my mum still lives in France."

The taxi stops and she yanks Harry into it, barks the directions to Whitehall at the muggle driver who is having a real time of it as she shimmies across Harry's lap to her seat. Having a time of it doesn't cover what Harry's going through.

 _"Silencio,"_ she whispers, walling their conversation off.

His gorgeous, brilliant, oldest and dearest friend just slid across his lap in a skirt that barely passes her bum. He could feel the warmth coming off her core in the overly-chilled air of the taxicab.

"There's a door on the other side."

"I know," she says with a grin. "Next part of the plan I need you pissed off."

"What is the next part of the plan, Hermione?"

"It is May 11th, 1966. Later tonight, the first-ever female minister of magic will get caught shagging her assistant and have to resign."

"Okay..."

"It's the assistant's fault they got caught and I'm a dead ringer for her assistant. And she liked to bring in blokes, too. Muggles. So her assistant would be burning the canlde at both ends, as it were."

Harry gulps.

"Right."

"There's a minster-only entrance. We'll knock the assistant out and slip in. I'll do the talking. When we get there, look big, act like a muggle bloke who'd been confundus-ed and I'll make the sale. Then just lie back," she smirks. "and think of England."

Harry feels a migraine building.

"You're a bloody menace, woman."

"That's the spirit!"

\-----

The first female Minister of Magic--a stern voiced, square-rimmed glasses type--is also an absolute _demon in_ _the sack_ and has absolutely no business being that hot at her age.

Harry leaves her office sore, well-ridden and probably actually confounded at that point. 

He's more worried about the return visit she demanded with a pinch of the cheeks than he is facing still-human, still-learning Voldemort in this time period.

"She liked you," Hermione teases over her shoulder.

He plucks a curly white hair out of his teeth.

She's bent over a table that seems to be made entirely of keyholes. When she told him she'd memorized every security breach at the Department of Mysteries from 1900-1997 he wasn't even surprised. 

"What was your first clue?"

"The part where she basically lunged to sit on your face."

"That was mine too," he admits, rubbing his stiff neck.

"I guess I can cross 'fucking the first female minister of magic' off my bucket list," she jokes. "Can cross 'fuck Harry' off too. Though that one might need a repeat." 

"Why yes, Hermione, I'm fine. I too feel that having sex with someone I've loved for seven years and wanted since I knew what wanting girls _was_ as part of a ploy to do fuck-knows on a time traveling mission of some kind is just an every day thing...why would we need to talk about it?"

She stops fiddling with the key-table.

"Right. Sorry. It _does_ matter. There _is_ an us. It's stage three. We're late in stage one. Stage one is the really dicey bit."

"Naturally," he huffs.

"Flip my skirt down, yeah? I have to focus on this lock before boss lady recovers. Pity," Hermione sighs. "I had some ideas for what she could do after a spanking."

Three days ago--in his head, forty two years in the future--he was puking in terror in Hogsmeade getting ready for the final assault. Two days ago, he was saying goodbye to Ginny and helping Molly load up Fred, George, and Percy's bodies. Yesterday, he was wandering their shared home as stones and torch-holders and windows shattered around them. Hogwarts was collapsing under the weight of damage and with so many of the faculty who maintained it dead or wounded.

Three hours ago, Hermione was smacking him with a yellowed newspaper.

Now, it doesn't seem weird that Hermione's asking him to fix her clothes so her shiny, oozing cunt isn't visible if the door behind her opens. It's more like it's weird that she'd care if she did give someone a peep.

Maybe she can get through to Bellatrix after all. He's been chasing a brunette tornado in a miniskirt and smudged makeup through London all night trying not to get stabbed with any debris. If nothing else, the mad witch and this turbocharged, reckless Hermione have a similar pacing.

"YES!" she crows, turning the key.

"Brilliant. What'd we just do?"

"Hand me the pliers and the lighter from my bag, yeah?"

"Okay..."

He pulls out-- _wait a fucking minute--_ dental pliers.

"I am not stealing some bloke's teeth, Hermione. There's a line. Even for lunatics like us."

"Heat the tips," she mumbles, holding her mouth open. "Sterilize them.

"I'm sure as hell not breaking any of your teeth. No."

She closes her mouth, shakes her head vigorously like she's shaking the crazy out and takes his hand.

"Emergency kit. I charmed false teeth to stick out of my jaw at about a forty-five degree angle. At the back. Two top, two bottom. You're not taking any teeth nature intended me to have. I'll pop a Vicodin later, when we're safe."

"Why did I even bother arguing?"

She guides him to the right ones, looks straight into his eyes and nods.

"Bo it yick!" she demands.

He hopes she meant do it quick, because he does just that. Each tooth comes out easily. They probably really weren't hooked to anything. 

"Fuck," she mumbles, catching her bloody drool in her hand as she blinks back tears.

"You all right?"

She nods, spitting the blood out.

"Put that one in the empty pill bottle. And don't step on it accidentally."

"Why not?"

"It's filled with a compressed pellet of Russian nerve gas."

"WHAT?"

"Harry. We were at war. I rigged these up after Bellatrix tortured me. If I ended up under another torturing lunatic, I was going to bite down, blow in her face and take her and anyone in the room with me."

"Do I even want to fucking know what the others do?"

"Four cast-bronze grains of rice. Portkeys, engraved under a 100x magnifying glass."

"That's...handy, I'll have to admit that."

"The last one has a sandwich bag I put a no-tear and an extension charm on with a couple more like it inside. Just like my handbag, but suitable for sterile uses like medical specimens."

"Again, handy. I imagine I'll be carrying one of my organs on ice to Saint Mungo's before were done. Asking the nice mediwitches to put it back in."

What looks like a giant rolodex rises out of the floor. Each of the gaps between the cards is big enough to be a bunk on a bunk bed. Hermione opens it and climbs in, crooking a finger.

"Hop in, lover boy." 

It's meant for one, so it's a tight fit. So much so that he probably would have lost his nerve if he and Hermione hadn't just shagged.

"File 228 and 3/16, please."

He assumes she's talking to the rolodex.

The world around them spins and before he can get his bearings, Harry is spilled out onto a cold, pale green floor of thick tiles. He pushes himself up.

It's like a morgue, with six bodies. Two men, two women, and what look something like elves--though much taller--lie motionless under some sort of charm that's keeping the dust off.

"Swapping bodies," he mumbles.

"Exactly. When Grindelwald was around, one of his Lieutenants got onto a real kick about early Nazi research. Decided to create the perfect wizard's bodies. Dark wizards, at least. Assassins, or shock troopers. Came up with a program to breed two llegimancer with two metamorphmagii. Both sets were twin siblings. Naturally, by the time he reached generation three, he had the abilities down but they were barking mad from the abuse and from living in a lab since they were babies. Powerful as hell, though. Turned one female was a seer, too. Tore through five of his bodyguards using mind control and hand-to-hand and _then_ they got a hold of wands and shit really went sideways for him. So he had _another_ llegimancer wipe their minds after he subdued them and wipe the others before he even woke them."

"So, super-dangerous dark magic Frankensteins?"

"Bingo."

"Doesn't explain the elves."

"Same concept, different goals. Wanted to retain elvish wandless magic, stealth, and that weird thing they do where we can't tell they're in the room while reducing the less-human features. He bred them to quarter-elves. So still short. I doubt the male is even five-three but otherwise pretty ordinary. See?"

She lifts the hair off one of the female elves and Harry looks over her shoulder.

"Tiny point. And her nose is just big, not actually weird-looking."

"Kinda cute, really, with the big green eyes," Hermione sighs.

"Focus! Be fond of elves later!"

"This has to have had an even worse story," Harry groans.

"They were volunteers, actually. Servants of a house in Poland that treated their elves so badly they would think Dobby was king of the world. After the duel with Grindelwald, Dumbledore found the original donor's bodies in tombs marked 'honored comrade' in Polish. That's how this all got dug up."

"Brilliant. So evil wizard research. Great trivia. Now what?"

Hermione's smile is really unsettling.

"Now, we do what he couldn't."

"No. Fuck! Fuck! No, just...no."

"Harry. Are _you_ crazy? Do you _feel_ crazy, right this minute?"

"I'm talking to you! So I'm starting to bloody wonder, aren't I?"

She grabs his arms and shakes him so he'll look at her.

"Harry. There's nothing _in those._ We're not crazy. Our minds in those will still be, well, our minds. But these bodies were in are like taking a piss on the universe's face. They have to go."

"Besides, if I had to guess, a body with a magical core this dark and this _huge_ ," she says, flicking her wand over the male corpse which seems to simply vanish into a lightless void.

"Is just what makes a Black girl's panties drop. They're not bad looking, either. Dark hair, this jaw," she jokes, pretending to punch the male body and then break her hand. "Something dangerous is definitely responsible for that bulge in the sheets."

"Her! Fuck. I could conquer the world with hips like these. And these...woof."

"Please stop playing with the experimental monster's tits, Hermione."

"Just getting used to them from this side," she jokes.

"Let's say," Harry groans. "Hypothetically. That saving the world and preventing our friends from dying is a good cause and more importantly, I've had enough head trauma between Dudley, trolls, and well...everything at Hogwarts that I'm considering it."

"Let's say. Hypothetically," she says with a grin.

"How?"

"Dead simple. We just need to find a llegimancer who will swap _us_ into them. It's risky and it takes several weeks but any skilled one can manage it. Besides horcruxes and the philosopher's stone, it's actually the third way to cheat death. Just not very easy since you need either a all-but-dead body or a living but braindead victim. Either one it has to have the same innate powers you do--if any--or it's not much a next life. Basically has to be a llegimancer's body unless you only plan to do it once."

"Only four people ever tried it," she tells him.

"Hand me the portkeys. Let's get to work."

"Please don't tell me you _also_ know where to find a llegimancer with no morals thirty years before we were born."

"Nah," she chuckles. "Luna does. She's a seer. Mostly short range and almost completely out of her control but she's got Trelawney blown away on number of correct visions. I think it's part of why she's odd in conversation. In the dungeon, she kept calm talking about her visions. She is going to marry a man named Rolf Scamander."

"Like the magical creatures textbook?"

"Grandson, yeah. Her future grandfather in law is Newt Scamander. Newt's sister in law is Queenie Goldstein. American witch. She is one of, if not the most powerful innate llegimancers of the last few centuries. Open question if she could have mind-controlled Voldemort because she passed on before he really got going. She couldn't stop reading mind. So much so that she worked from home when she could. She married an American muggle, hoping her kids wouldn't hear everyone else's thoughts quite so loudly."

"So we're going to walk up, tell them we are friends of people their grandchildren haven't married yet, and ask them to do this incredibly illegal favor? Just pop us into these bodies that Voldemort's role model cooked up?"

"Remember Anthony Goldstein at school?" Hermione asks.

"Yeah. Always said he was the only person you could drill the NEWTs with. Smart boy. Died in the east wing, we found out."

"The Goldsteins are Jewish, Harry. On _the maternal side._ Her family knows what persecution can do. How hard do you think it's going to be to show her our memories of what we suffered, talk Queenie into stopping someone like Voldemort before he gets moving. Especially when she was in the thick of it for Grindelwald _and_ it saves her grandson's life?"

"Not very hard at all?"

"Now you're getting it!"

 _Yes,_ Harry decides. _This version of Hermione is more than crazy enough to get Bellatrix's attention._

She helps him lay the six bodies together in three stacks of two and holds his hand across the tops of the middle stack.

"Focus. We're pulling a lot through a small portkey."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hermione has too much information for her own good!


	2. Homemade Bread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where the soul is in the bread.

**West Country, May 28th, 1966**

The first thing Harry is aware of is Hermione's voice.

"- _ervate._ "

"My head..."

Queenie Goldstein's face appears in the edge of his smeared vision. A few smile lines decorate her mouth and her brown eyes are twinkling. He's not sure he's ever met anyone so soothing and nurturing besides Molly.

"Here, young man."

She holds a steaming slice of bread to his lips.

"What's this?" he mumbles.

"Fresh-baked bread. Centers the mind and soul in the body. Family trick of the trade."

Harry takes a huge bite. When he lifted the bread to his mouth, his stomach roiled seeing hands that _weren't his_ at the end of his arms. It's still a flip-floppy, not great feeling but it's tolerable now.

BAA!

"Jesus!" he sputters, trying to get up and finding himself at least partially under a Body-Bind curse. 

"It's just the barn, Harry. We're going to check you then I'll let you up."

"Right," he gasps, flopping back.

"When Neville tried to stop us, what curse did I cast?"

" _Petrificus totalus._ "

"What did I cast to get Ron out of the Devil's snare?"

" _Lumos solem._ "

"Who did I take to the Yule Ball?"

"Victor Krum."

"Who did I want to take?"

"Um, Ron? Cedric?"

"You. The way you handled those tasks...how much you learned when it really mattered...how you saved Gabrielle? You, Harry."

"What did I say to you after the Yule Ball?"

"Off to bed, both of you!"

"In the ministry, what _instructions_ did I give you?"

"Kiss my way up from your knees, bite your inner thighs, and _only_ suck until you say you want licking."

Hermione grins.

"Thanks, Queenie. If you'd be so kind...I have a few locomotive diagnostics to run. So bup-bup-bup, off you go, innocent eyes and all. We'll be back for dinner."

She chuckles.

"Don't scare my sheep. They give steel wool if Newt's animals in the cellar start making a fuss."

Hermione tosses a salute.

Queenie turns with one hand on the barn door.

"If this works, I suppose I can't ever see you again. If it doesn't, make sure Anthony pulls through. By then, he's all my name has."

Hermione whips out her wand--a long piece of glass with rune-carved silver rings sunk into notches around the grip which she uses like controls--and cuts her palm.

"I swear on my magic and my life."

"I'd rather you swear it on being a good person, young lady. But thank you. Be safe. I suppose I'll be reading about you in the paper."

"Hopefully."

\-----

Hermione offers her hand.

"Let's go for a jog. Help you get a feel for it."

Her pale arm is muscular and she yanks him to his feet with ease.

"Took me two weeks," she admits. "Had a real time swallowing solid food at first."

"Your old body?" he asks, terrified for the answer.

"Buried in the plot in London next to the one my mum and dad will reserve someday."

"Mine?"

"Thrown into a phoenix nest. What's left will be burned. Seemed appropriate for a Gryffindor."

Hermione leans out the door, braces her wand on her forearm and takes aim at a the rocky cap of a small hill.

"BOMBARDA!"

Her blasting hex doesn't just _break_ the huge boulder. It blows it up with enough force to spatter molten rock in a ring around the smoking crater.

"Merlin..." he mumbles.

Hermione grins.

"Mixed a bit of a fire charm in."

"Terrifying.

"Never seen one like it. What's the wood?"

"Petrified wood from a thunderbird roost in New Mexico. Was not cheap. Almost a thousand galleons between them. Light can shine through it, which is why the rings and runes work."

"The core is Scandinavian Stormwing dragon's heartstring. They're the real nasty ones. Live up in the mountains, rub their wings on special rock up there. Shards embed in the bone. So they can kick up blizzards and lightning."

"I had a devil of a time getting it to heal a cut. Making things heal is not what this wand's first choice is. So I went back and asked him to add the rings. The inner lining on them is unicorn hair on the middle one, rolled up thunderbird feather on the ones on either end. Mellows it out a bit. Depending on how I arrange them, the feathers soften and soak the magic in to tone it down, or the unicorn hair unifies the pull really let it blast. Loads easier."

"Yours is heartstring from the dragon's mate and thunderbird feathers from the thunderbird's mate."

_Lover's wands. That's...almost sweet for new scary Hermione._

"This must be fifteen, sixteen inches, Hermione."

He swishes it experimentally.

"Heavy. Feels more like a club."

"Hence the curved grip," she explains. "Petrified wood's tough but dropping one of these unpredictable wands in mid-cast is just not smart. Mine went off like a pistol when it hit the hay. Had to put the side door back on."

She offers him a small, velvet lined case. In it is a very similar wand, twice as thick and half again as long. His has five rings, not just three.

"Your wand, my love. _My Brother."_

"Do we have to use that?" he whines. "Really know more about your kinks than I'd like now."

"Bellatrix and Narcissa did some taste testing and are about to get their lives ruined. If we walk up to Cygnus dressed to kill, acting the part of the scions of a French-Swiss family with so much money we can't be fucked to care if we're screwing each other as brother and sister, he'll take note. Drop a chest of galleons and a bunch of deeds for foreclosed properties, asking him to help us rehabilitate our image while offering more than the Malfoy's can, we're a shoe in."

"If he doesn't buy it?"

"Comes to it, we'll do what I just did to that hill. HIs daughters not falling in love with Lucius and Voldemort is the key objective here. Your job is to take that financial support away and I think I've got a plan where Bella and I can kill Voldy. Then we can pick the rest off at our leisure. I think we try not to kill anyone we can get into Azkaban, yeah?"

"Any, uh...side effects?" he asks. "These people were barmy before they got blanked. And you just talked about killing someone for turning down a betrothal like it was a normal thing to consider."

"Yeah," she grimaces. "I have a harder time feeling sorry for people. Not that I feel no empathy. I do sometimes, not other times. I can't find it in myself to care if I have to kill Cygnus Black and wipe my bum on his corpse. But I had a long cry when I saw a lamb get stuck in a fence this morning. So I'll practice. Volunteer at the humane society, or read to orphans."

"Worse are the memory issues."

"Ouch. That's got to be a personal hell for you."

"At least I'm good with taking notes."

"You?"

Harry blushes. "Bit hot under the collar. Temper. I can't decide if I want to throw you into the hay and kiss you or bend you over the pig trough and bugger you until you can't talk."

"And that's with nothing making me mad. Scared what I'll do if someone pisses me off in a bar."

"How about that jog?" she asks. "But lets come back to the buggering thing."

As he laces up wrong-feeling boots, he watches Hermione stretch and limber herself up. 

Even squeezed tight into the sports bra she packed from their own time, her breasts are plump and the outline makes it hard to look at anything else. He's only really enjoyed them once and the way gasps fell from her lips when he took one in his mouth makes him eager to try again.

She's braided her hair--a glossy river that goes down to her bum--but it's so similar in color to the bushy, wild hair of the little girl helping Neville find his toad that it's possible to pretend it's what Hermione's hair would be if she went into sports and developed that sort of physique. If she was his pro quidditch teammate. The long limbed, wiry keeper on the team he played seeker for.

Hermione being here and smiling at him feels a little bit better about this lunatic scheme of hers. Her wide hips and broad shoulders call to him. Harry wants to waltz in a dim room with one hand on her hip and one around her back and her hair falling over them both.

She gained probably four or five inches on her old body, coming eye to eye with him. Harry's now six feet, perhaps six-one. Her legs are long, the skin milky pale and when she moves, the wiry sinew jumps out.

It's a runner's body. A soldier's body. A _predator's_ body.

Whoever chose the bloodlines for these bodies wasn't just thinking of weapons, he suspects. They wanted them to look regal. So that after the usurper had been slain, the peasants would look up at the throne and feel honored to be in their presence.

And they should! Narcissa draped over his lap, petting Bellatrix's hair as she sprawls on Hermione's as they sit judgement on the old dark families. Telling them what will and what will _not_ be tolerated under their watch.

Harry is definitely going to have to _work_ on not going Dark.

She leads him out of the barn at a merciful trot as he stumbles along with feet and legs that don't feel quite _his._ The swish of her braid and the bounce of her lycra-clad bum are the carrot and the risk of falling on the rough, stony goat path is the stick.

"How you feeling?" she asks after they've gone a mile or so.

"Odd."

She trots over and kisses him.

"Now?"

"Like you're trying to talk me into something."

She rolls her eyes.

"Soon as we get a ring on the Black girls, we've done what we came here to do. I for one am looking forward to being Mrs. Granger-Potter. Well, Lady Black-Granier. The French version of the name." 

* * *

**West Country, January 1994**

"Dad?" Luna calls out. "There's post from a Lady Granier here."

Her father stops tickling the giggling apple tree he was pruning. He strips off his gardening gloves.

"No one I know. French name isn't it? Like Granger here."

"It's a profession-name, papa. Sheriff who kept the granary."

He kisses the top of her head.

"Why do I ask. You always know, clever daughter."

"That's interesting," Xenophilius says. "Postmarked in 1966. Gringotts must have held it."

My Dear Friend.

For the next four years, you must tell absolutely no one the contents of this letter. 

On January 1st, 2000 you may share this with others.

My name is Hermione Granger. I hope that we are still friends in your time. 

On the Second of May, 1998 you and I fought side by side in the Battle of Hogwarts, the cruelest and most costly battle of the Second Wizarding War. With us fought Neville Longbottom, the Weasley brothers, Ginny Weasley, an Auror called Tonks, and a brotherhood called the order of the phoenix.

Our enemy was a man called Tom Riddle who styled himself a immortal being named Lord Voldemort. He pursued pureblood only laws and executed muggles and muggleborn. He slew most of the Auror corps, gathered giants and werewolves to him and held all of our country in fear.

With your help, a boy named Harry Potter killed him. We were children. To have won the war meant nothing. The war was never ours to have fought. 

So I took Harry back in time on May 4, 1998 to take two of his most crucial lieutenants from him when he was at his most vulnerable. If the battle happens, that is the point we'll disappear from. Come up with a story of how we died, please. Killed by falling books shagging in the library. Anyone who knows me would believe it without skipping a beat.

Tomorrow, my intended and I will execute a plot to kill Voldemort. I hope we succeed, and this letter has you scratching your head about this Second Wizarding War and you think some silly old lady sent it. If the tiniest part of this feels familiar, remember these five things.

**Dumbledore must live.**  
 **Snape must die.** His value as a double agent is minimal.  
 **Draco Malfoy must die.** His father will make him do terrible things.  
 **Gather and protect the Deathly Hallows.**  
 **Destroy the horcruxes.**  
(Please find a list on the reverse of what items were horcruxes in our time)  
  
If I'm still alive to have kids, we'll be naming one Selene after your mum.

Your past and future friend,

  
Hermione Malleus Jean D'Arc Black-Granier, Lady of the Ancient and Noble House of Black  
Order of Merlin 1st Class  
Order of Morgana 1st Class  
Scion of the Flamefeather female line  
Scion of the Whitelance female line

Dated June 5, 1966

  
PS - Rolf will not mean to spill the soup on you...probably. His grandfather Newt had the same exact thing happen to him, but on his wedding day, not on the first date.

Luna turns the letter over.

"Hmm. Going back in time made Hermione very grim...she's so cheerful!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Queenie from _Fantastic Beasts_ is a sweetheart! Love getting even a few lines with her.  
> \-----  
> Who else but Luna would get that wacky letter and just shrug it off?


	3. A Dip, a Nip, and A Bouquet of Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where needs must and Harry has decided that as long as he can get bookworm, squashy sweater Hermione, he can play-act being a badass killer and Ginny Weasley can get it.

**London -- May 30, 1966**

Harry's learned that if Hermione says the world 'plan' it's best to duck and if she says 'disguise' he's to freeze still and wait to see if she's going to tell him to scowl, flirt, or threaten somebody.

She ran out of weaponized trivia with picking the nearly-extinct Granier family. They'd sent twin siblings to raid the ministry's confiscated artifacts vault in the 1810s and given the well-known fact that the ministry used things like time-onion charms to protect valuable things, she thought they could make a case for it having just taking a bloody long time to get out. The contents of the vaults were mostly rumors but as the Graniers were known for being a small family of vicious enforcers--assassins for the old lord's tax collectors--whatever artifact they put up with a century and a half nearly frozen in time for would need to be a weapon.

The Granier twins, as it turns out, share enough blood with the subjects of these experiments that Hermione could discover with a bone-matching charm on her own arm--without pulling the bone out, thank Merlin--they had died and in what she called 'classic fuck you old ministry rules' their bodies had been pitched in the Thames. So she stripped off her dress--she got into the habit of distracting, curve-hugging dresses--and dived into the Thames in a petticoat. At night. 

He feels rather like an idiot, sitting here on a boat dock, holding a dress over his lap. It's wool, not silk, and the sort of nearly-back blue that the night sky is which makes the tiny charms and glass beads here and there sparkle all the more. He's had to learn to wear different clothes too. Tight trousers and loose red silk shirts that come off quite pirate-y and apparently the top buttons are just to show the ladies that he could button up if they're not nice and take away the view. Harry's different clothes don't involve corsets with dozens of short knives tucked in to stiffen them and so-called 'comfort charms' that make her get randy if she stops breathing deep enough. 

Far as Harry can tell, she actually _likes these_ and he's starting to wonder if she went as Bellatrix to the Gringotts vault to test drive sexy dark-witch fashion. 

She's either sitting there calmly at the coffeshop with her tits looking like they're about to spill out or she's wild-eyed and catching her breath with her _flushed and freckled_ tits actually spilling out as she pants and bites her hand.

So that's been an experience.

Especially in tight trousers.

"You all right, lad?" calls an old fellow taking a wrench to a boat's motor a few docks down.

"Brilliant!" Harry calls back.

"Decided against a dress, eh?"

"She asked me to hold it!"

With a disgusted look at the motor, Harry's new friend tosses the wrench back in his toolkit. He comes over and plops down on a barrel next to Harry.

"Bird's got a dress that nice and she's swimming in this dirty old river at midnight?"

Harry shrugs.

"She's worth it. She's dead brilliant. She's going places and...better with the crazy ones, you know?"

"Aye. Bet she is. Just remember lad, they're sayings for a reason."

He had been pondering sayings like _don't stick your dick in crazy_ since they jumped back with the express purpose of somehow shagging dark witches back to the path of justice but always seemed a bit rude to the woman. After all, Hermione seems quite eager to get her tongue and fingers in crazy when it comes to Bellatrix. His one and only experience before the time jump had involved Narcissa and at one point, he turned her head away and told her she was good enough to fuck but not good enough to look at. It was leftover anger at _Lucius_ but it just fell out of his mouth and he felt like shit for saying it but her cunt clamped down, she whined and her entire marvelous, pillowy body shuddered. He decided to go with it and then she gave him a sweaty smile, pressed her warm body against his and they made out in sticky silk sheets for probably five hours until the aurors came back to check on her house arrest. 

So he should try to keep an eye to equality and accept that he's an asshole of the highest degree.

Hermione bursts from the water, grabbing the supports with one arm and with the other, plunking down four packages wrapped in what looks like an old burlap sack. The petticoats under the dress have been transformed into a muggle-style wetsuit, probably while she was down there.

"Piss off, old timer. I'm in the mood for a knobber," she snarls.

"G'night," the old man laughs, wandering off whistling _God Save the Queen._

"Hermione, you're not act..."

She grins.

"No. I'm bloody freezing and while a fast nasty shag would get my core temperature up, feeling a bit slimy after the water. Saving that for the carriage ride in Paris. But he slunk off, didn't he?"

"That's actually a relief. I don't want to be giving a show to some wino stumbling around the crates back there. Is that weird?"

"Not at all."

"Good haul?"

Hermione levers herself out of the river and takes her wand from his hand, casting a purifying and warming charm on herself.

"Fucking incredible. Open these first."

He takes the smallest package and pulls out two golden amulets on steel chains. Each is a gold coin with a tiny wrought iron knife cutting it nearly in half and embedded in the tip of the knife are a few small rubies. Taxes gathered by force and a bloody knife. A murderous taxman's amulet.

"Granier family badges. I think you'll look brilliant in the smaller one. Long chain, so just let it hang over your pecs. I'll take the one with the pink gold, obviously."

She sits up and pulls her hair off her neck.

"Please?" she coos.

_Bloody hell._

After he gets the clasp closed around his neck, he pats his lap. She scoots into it.

"We have to talk, Hermione."

She groans.

"Right. I've been a real lunatic bi-"

"Not exactly. Moments, yes, like when we're stealing evil Frankensteins. But mostly, I didn't come here to run away with some dark witch with a body that isn't possible without enchantments. I came here with _Hermione Granger,_ my friend, and if we'd fucked off to a flat somewhere and cuddled on the couch while you read every book ever written in English and I got fat cooking for us? Still would have been the happiest unemployed but well-read wizard in England."

"You want me to be sweet."

"I want you to be _you._ Not to put on this act all the time. I can see it's making you tired. Cyrus Greengrass isn't standing behind us. You can be you here. And I want that when you can. If I had to guess, someone like Bellatrix didn't get much affection when she was our age. She's probably going to be happier with Hermione Granger than Lady Granier"

She hums.

"For the man who killed the most dangerous creature on Earth, you're a real softy."

"I try."

"I think I found out how they died."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. They did make it into the vault."

She unfurls the burlap. Inside is a long sword, easily as long as the Sword of Gryffindor but wider blade and an even more innate pommel.

"The Coward's Sword. Clarent. Faerie forged, I'm pretty sure. No iron and whatever it was heated with burned way hotter than a charcoal forge."

"Coward's Sword?"

"The carvings and runes actually read 'a sword which shall draw no blood' and it was originally called the Peace Sword. King Arthur used this in parleys. If he came carrying the Peace Sword, it was a good sign. Even if it went south, he fought with Excalibur, not this. First time it was drawn was when his son killed him with it. Guinevere was there and legend says her handmaidens had to carry her away when her skin peeled from the dried salt. It took on the blood of a king and the tears of his widow, one of the first witches in recorded British history. She and Arthur were the only survivors of the destruction of First Camelot by Morgana herself. A light which powerful enough that we can find her magical essence in women in England to this very day, intense enough that it's like she was a grandmother."

"Huh."

"Huh?"

"Huh is an appropriate reaction to your brilliant girlfriend who doesn't believe in Nargles taking a dip in a nasty river and coming up with Excalibur's evil twin."

"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords, Harry. Proud tradition."

She unfurls the next two packages which are a pair of daggers, one moonlight pale with a glittering blade that looks almost like it's a blue crystal and golden hilt and the other so black he can't see its shape. Drawing thin tendrils of light from the streetlights above. Like it's eating the light. 

She taps the black one and tendrils of smoke twist around her finger.

"This one is Carnwennan, Little White Hilt, Arthur's dagger which he used to kill the daughter of hedgewitch Orddu."

"There's nothing white about it."

"Legend has it could shroud its wielder in shadow. We now know that Orddu was with the Light and he tortured and killed her trying to track down Morgana. So this looks like an evil blade because the first kill it made was a little girl, killed in front of her mother. Enchanted quartz blades with faerie-copper hilts were common as druidess' ritual knives. It's longer, maybe a twelve inch blade. So it was a weapon too. The great shining king killed a nine-year-old with the dark dagger and took the light one from Orddu. Just claimed that the sexy looking one was his."

"I feel like if I touch any of these I deserve to have my fingers fall off," Harry grumbles.

"That's not the funny part."

"THERE'S A FUNNY PART?"

"I found these swords _inside_ the skeletons. I think they shrunk them down and put no-bloodletting charms on and tried smuggle them out in a part of the body where no auror would dare go poking. Probably tripped or something, broke the protective charms. Clarent split the soft palette under her brainpan when it unsheathed itself.

"There's three blades, Hermione."

"Some men like it in the bum, Harry. Not just gay men."

Harry sighs.

"We'll wipe them off before using them, agreed?"

"Agreed. Well, let's get to Paris. If we're going to impress Cyrus as nasty pureblooded perverts of French descent, I know just the rite of passage to go through."

**Paris, France -- May 31st, 1966**

"Here, vampire, vampire, vampire!" Harry calls out. "Here, boy!"

Tonight moved Hermione firmly back into the absolutely mental and dead sexy categories. Turns out that most families in Continental Europe had some right of passage before one became eligible to marry. The Rosiers and their close allies, including the Graniers, took their daughters and their sons into the catacombs under Paris to 'master' a vampire from an ancient nest there. Strigoi vampires. The ones with the strength of a wyvern, skin hard as granite and fangs sharp and hard as steel knives.

Mastering appears to mean using a special charm to addict it on his blood and then shagging it until it passes out. Dominating it and making it so that _only_ Harry's blood will do and it will react to a scratch behind the ears like it's the sexiest thing ever.

Apparently, Rosiers don't believe in house elves and don't want their daughters going off to be married without a lethal bodyguard for their new home.

Hermione being a show off, managed to snag _two_ vampiresses in about an hour, feeding them from arteries in her thighs before shoving their heads between her legs. After addicting them and tapping her wand to their fangs to seal the deal she grabbed a textbook she got that the University bookstore. Some bloke named Skinner, who did lots of studies on training monkeys and rats. She started training them. Snap her fingers, they kneel. Make a little hissing sound, they curl up around her legs and doze off. Tap their forehead with two fingers and they melt into boneless, sighing lumps no matter how afraid they were before.

Ring a bell and they snap to attention like the worlds most eager, over-caffeinated house elf and do whatever task she mimes them through.

"There's asleep now," Hermione sighs, tracing a glowing white rune around the bite marks she received with a diamond-shafted stylus she withdrew from Gringotts' branch in Paris. "Kind of cute. Wish I knew what they're speaking. It sounds like Latin but it's not. Given that the robes had rotted right off and the little one's bronze jewelry is half-eroded, which takes centuries, I think they're maybe Roman-era. Nubian slaves. Probably tossed down here from a brothel when they pissed someone off or the demand for dark-skinned whores ran out."

"Cheerful," Harry mumbles through his chattering teeth.

He's absolutely freezing. He ended up with a skinny male vampire with brown eyes and a elfin face that rolled over about as soon as he smiled at it. So he put the _sangria bacchus_ and _purficatio inversi_ charm on his wrist, dug deep on his mental wards and held his arm out. The next part was a bit dicier. 

He'd never buggered anyone and never thought about fucking another bloke. Never thought about liking it. Never thought about not liking it. Turns out he's not as stuck up as Hermione teases him and a partner's a partner. He liked it. Wouldn't do it every day if given the choice but he could see it being like a weird, fun meal he cooks only now and then. A vampire's arse is _cold_ but the lubrication charm Hermione taught him worked a treat and seems to have had a warming element to the jelly it created. He warmed up to the idea quicker than he would've thought because the vampire made these sweet little cooing noises and turned his head for a toothy kiss that left Harry's lips bloody.

Then something startled it and his pet scampered off so fast the air _cracked_ around it.

So he's standing here with his bits out, Hermione's laughing and he's feeling more than a bit slimy. 

He didn't rape the vampire. Didn't even touch it until it bit into him. He suspects ordinary blood might not have been as much of an incentive. He's trying to lure his new friend--pet? fuck buddy?--back after Hermione dealt with the alpha with a flick of the hand that wasn't cradling the back of a dark-skinned head to her cunt. 

She dealt with a two-thousand-year-old monster with a wandless _lumos solem_ with an origin point starting a good distance off so as not to hurt hers. She couldn't control the shape without a wand so it ended up being a ball of light and fire. Looked like a new star being born underground. With the creature's innate resistance to magic and injury shattered by sunlight, she followed that up by grabbing her wand and letting off a fire charm that collapsed the entire passage to the east. Melted it shut, more like.

The vampire Harry lured before appears at the edge of the shadow, head bowed and shivering.

"Ri," it mumbles. " _Mea culpa_."

"I'm sorry, in Latin. Guess it caught 'Harry' and didn't remember the rest of your name."

"How do I say 'forgiven' or something?"

 _ **(Dimittuntur tibi)** _Hermione says in his head. She's really had fun with the _llegimens_ spell lately.

" _Dimittuntur tubi_ ," Harry tells the poor creature.

The vampire chuckles softly.

 **(Probably not great pronunciation. In my defense, Mum didn't exactly take me to mass** _**often.)** _

Harry holds the collar out. Like Hermione, he brought half a dozen that ranged from suede to black patent leather to snake's scales to wolf fangs to a steel chain she nicked off a motorcycle in a junkyard. Let the vampire pick, she explained. They'll be sharing a house with it, after all. The vampire--who's name he will have to learn somehow--looks them over and taps the suede one. Then it bites its own wrist and drips some of its own black, nearly frozen, slushy blood onto the leather. It turns a brilliant crimson and the vampire kneels, holding his dirty, platinum blonde hair off his neck.

Harry feels like less of an absolute monster when this vampire--a creature that is objectively an absolute monster--nuzzles into his palm and cries happy, icy tears.

"That's seen to," Hermione sighs. "Help me forge some coffins with light-eating charms and we'll grab a taxi. Can't take them flying, not when they've been underground so long. We'll outfit lairs in the cellar and we can work them up to minimal exposure. Till then, curtains drawn, no exceptions."

She twirls her still-hot wand in her gloved fingers.

"Care to go take the piss out of Bellatrix's dad?"

He throws his arm around her.

"Hermione, love. That's the first remotely _fun_ thing you've suggested in days."

* * *

**London -- May 30, 1996**

Hermione looks over at Harry. She wasn't sure what she was expecting when they finally made it to 12 Grimmauld Place but she wasn't expecting a stately house. The roof is worn, true. The curtains need replacing. It's not the blackened hole it will one day be. The windows are intact. The door hangs straight on the hinges. The paint on the walls is dark cherry with crimson accents and as bright as the merciless, impregnable wards a half-pace closer to the door.

Harry seems broken. There's a light on in the upstairs window on the west side.

"That's Sirius' room, isn't it Harry?"

"Yeah. He's seven."

"Well, if we do this just right we can probably foster him. Get him away from this awful place. Awful parents. Beat Voldemort. Send him to Hogwarts when he's ready. Tell him that James Potter is a lovely boy and that Lily Evans will never let anything bad happen to him. Tell him to stomp Peter Pettigrew's bollocks at earliest opportunity."

"Best plan we've got, isn't it?"

"Sure is. Give me a kiss. Remember. Twin brother, didn't find out you existed until I dreamt about you when I was thirteen. Hunted you down, killed them family keeping you hostage and fucked you stupid over their graves."

"Right. Stupid, I can manage. Not sure how you keep up with this rollercoaster."

"Kissing me isn't that much of a chore," she teases. "Is it?"

Hermione taps her wand sharply on the rune that reads 'parley' in Old Norse.

Cygnus Black the III peeks out of the curtains. Bloodshot eyes, unshaven. Reeking of whisky from here. Unless he gets those Malfoy galleons, he's a ruined man. Sirius can't be betrothed until fifteen--boys are lucky--and the gold will be gone ages before that.

"We come to offer betrothal!" Harry bellows.

The wards dissolve and reform, creating a tunnel along the front path. Hermione takes one end of the heavy chest of galleons and Harry takes the other. A young-looking Kreacher the elf opens the door.

"Kreacher takes your coatses?"

"Kreacher does not speak until spoken to," Hermione says icily. "Kreacher will have one year to learn his new mistresses' manners and preferences or Kreacher will get clothes."

 **(At least it's the one house-elf I genuinely can't fucking stand.)** she thinks. **(But he's young. Time to help him mellow out.)**

"Kreacher lives to serve."

Cygnus staggers over to an armchair and sets the whisky on the floor.

"Speak your piece. I've already got a contract on Cissy. Bellatrix will take hers or I'll have her in Knockturn alley by winter."

Hermione taps the trunk.

"Quarter of a million galleons. Each. We will remain here until it is deposited. Once it is, you will lead us to your daughters at Saint Dessica's and then we shall let you retire from here to a mansion built to your specifications or we will take them to our property in Dunbar."

"And who are you to think galleons and boasting shall sway the Ancient and Noble House of Black?"

"Hermione Malleus Jean D'Arc Granier, of the Proud and Stalwart House Granier. Our knives rain gold. Free woman and wielder..."

**(That's their house motto, Harry...)**

She draws the crystal blade and lays it across her wand, balancing it at the midpoint.

"Of Little White Hilt, the dagger of Arthur himself, used to slit the throat of the white witch who sought to keep him from his revenge. Recovered in a raid on the ministry's vaults in which I slew..."

She drops a pile of splintered wands on the ground.

"Nineteen fool aurors who thought a time-onion ward could hold me."

**(Got those out of a to-be-repaired bin.)**

"You, boy? Your sister got your balls?"

"Only when she wants them," Harry replies. "Our interest in your daughters is not merely the nobility of their wombs. It's true that a knight's house could scarcely dream of such a match in normal times but as you know from your troubles with that halfblooded warlord called Voldemort, these are not normal times. Where will be taking them, their predilections will not be shamed and they will enjoy her bed, my bed, our bed as they choose. If you do not wish them sullying your name in England, we'll take them out of your sight to France."

"Half blood?" Cygnus asks.

"Muggle father. Visit Riddle Manor. You'll not feel a drop of magic except for his nursery."

"Heirs? My fool nephew's likely to fuck a goat or a mudblood as he is a witch."

Harry sneers.

"Graniers have Whitelance blood, sir. If your daughters can survive the spear, they'll be fat as sows often as I want. Send you the second son by owl."

**(I'm both frightened and impressed Harry.)**

**(I'm about to piss myself. This is not easy to fake.)**

**(The worst father in history is smiling, so keep it up.)**

Cygnus harrumphs.

"It's enough gold, all right. Pity the one who marries Bellatrix though."

Hermione flicks her dagger into the air, catches it, and puts it back on her belt. She shifts her fist--clumsily, she's never had it before and she's barely practiced--in a meaty, hairy man's fist to prove she's an metamorphmagus.

"I find that the more rabid the bitch, the more she is to fun to collar. They never expect another _witch_ to fill them up."

Cygnus cackles.

"Aye, lass. You'll do. Fetch a blood seer with my account manager and you've got your terms."

Hermione nods.

"You'll have to prove your mettle though. My prior house elf is downstairs. Told him to kill a couple mudblood niggers I caught skulking about. Failed. Too weak. Bring me the elf's head and kill the mudbloods. You've got a deal."

Harry draws the Coward's Sword.

"Our knives rain gold. We live to serve our liege-lords. Which way to the cellar?"

"I'll come with," Hermione purrs. "I like to watch the light leave their eyes. Makes me _slick._ "

\-----

Hermione stands over the bound woman. Harry has the house elf bound and struck with _engorgio_. With the amount of dried blood on his tiny, rusty knife and the gangrenous wounds on the woman's breasts, belly and ribs, they didn't debate long whether to spare him during this little display. 

She draws her wand, which is already dripping molten iron in anticipatory glee.

"I'll have your name before I kill you, bitch."

"T-t-t-homas, ma'am. Sarah Thomas. I-I-I-I wasn't stealing anything. My Will said there were mulberries in the alley. Picked some for me on a walk. I went round the corner to the chemists for some sweets. He screamed, I came to help."

**(Fuck. Harry. Dean Thomas's grandmother is Sarah Thomas. Maybe his aunt. Forget. She's the pureblood side. I don't think she's even our age. Our real age.)**

"And him?" Harry asks, leveling the sword at the bloodied, insensate man next to her.

"Will. Please," she sniffs. He's all I have."

"On three, sister?"

"On three," Hermione agrees.

"AVADA KADAVRA!" Harry shouts, whipping his aim to the left at the last moment. The foul energy strikes the wall between the house elf's bound legs. Hermione aimed wide too, in her case at a mangy looking racoon that was pawing through the flour in the pantry.

**(Let's make a mess, lover.)**

"BOMBARDA!" he roars, spattering the west wall and half the south wall with elf blood from a body four times its normal size. Hermione does the same to a wasp's nest out the broken back window.

"Spur of the moment," she mumbles.

" _Episkey_ ," she whispers, aiming her wand at Will Thomas' broken leg.

She reaches into the leather pouch tied around her wrist and pulls a bottle of Skele-Gro, a vial of essence of dittany and some blood-filling potion out. She picks up a cracked plate from the ground.

"Where do you want to go?"

"East end," Sarah sniffs.

Hermione breaks the plate over her knee.

" _Portus_ ," she whispers. "Barking Abbey."

She repeats the process on the other half.

"The monks should hide you for a few days. Good luck. I'm not sure if Cygnus will catch us in a lie here but I hear Liverpool's lovely this time of year. We've got a friend there. Named Dean, I think?"

"Sounds right," Harry agrees.

He points his wand at the shattered bones of the house elf--named Vermin, because _fuck_ Walburga Black--and he re-engorges them to human size before scattering them around the room. The shield charm he put around the elf's head saved enough of it to fool Cygnus.

Hermione hands over the plate and rolls the potions up in a cheese cloth. 

"If you don't mind my saying," Sarah mumbles. "Never knew dark witches with glowing red eyes to spare a black girl."

Hermione shrugs. 

"We all have our masks to wear. Love's complicated."

She kisses Harry's blood-coated cheek.

Sarah and Will portkey out. Near where they'd been tied, there's a toy motorcycle. A jet black, souped-up BMW Mottorad with a baby blue sidecar. Harry's seen that bike before. The life-sized working version features in several of his happiest memories. Roaring out of the sky with a friendly giant astride it. 

**(That's Sirius's bike, isn't it?)**

**(Toy version, yeah.)**

**(Bet Sarah gave it to him and he'd like it back)**

Hermione loads the severed head onto another ruined plate and heads upstairs. Harry goes out the back window and climbs the drainpipe. He knocks on Sirius window.

"Go away!" the little boy bellows. "You killed my friend."

" _Defenstra_ ," Harry says, tapping Sirius's window. The pane shatters into a thousand tiny marbles.

"Sarah wanted you to have this. Can you be a good, quiet boy until bedtime and keep your pillow over your head so you're not frightened? I'll take you to see her tomorrow, okay?"

Sirius nods, his oh-so-familiar black eyes sparkling. Good to know the pup is as pure-hearted as the shaggy old dog Harry once knew.

"Attaboy."

\-----

Harry does his best imitation of being disgusted with the elf's head. Really, he's disappointed. No reason to pass on hurt from one victim to the next. Hermione's going to need a four-hour bath and a six-hour cry after having to participate in that.

"A bargain?" he asks, holding his hand out.

Cygnus glances at the goblin and the blood seer. Both nod.

"Done. I'd rather a Rosier or a Lestrange but Graniers know their killing. If you can fuck a pup into Narcissa, at least my name lives on."

Hermione grins and with a flick of the wand, removes the anti-theft charms on the treasure chest.

"YOU HURT MY FRIEND!" Sirius bellows, running downstairs and throwing his tiny fists into Harry's body over and over.

"Boy needs a firm rod," Harry growls, grabbing the boy's wrists. "I'll deal with him. With your family's permission."

"He's not fit to carry the name Black, that's for sure."

Harry tosses Sirius over his shoulder. The boy kicks and punches him, barely registering against his muscular back.

He could swear he hears him _snickering,_ too.

* * *

**Holyhead Harpies Locker Room -- December 31, 2000**

"Fuck," Dean hisses.

Ginny's hips still atop him. Her molten sheath quivers and flutters around his length and her fingers relax, spreading out on his chest.

"You all right?"

"Feel like someone just walked on my mum's grave," he shudders.

"Well, last I checked she's alive. Sure as Merlin's ball-hair, I'm not calling her to check up right now!" she grumbles.

"You owe me two more for the win. So man up, finish me off and let's clear out before the chasers come in and want what's mine. We'll carry on at home."

"You're bloody mental, you gingers."

"Your fault for marrying me."

Her whiplike, muscular body swings into action again. Her heels dig into his calves almost painfully and the bench is hell on his back. Fuck Hogwarts. What's magic is watching sweat and water from the locker room shower rain off her flushed, freckled face. Her small breasts bounce in the cradle of his palms and the drag of his calloused skin on her nipples makes her whine each time it happens.

Ginny comes with a shout and he follows her with a groan muffled under her hand. 

"Shh! Fuck. That's Tandy. Not sure I can fight off a beater if she wants your cock."

He apparates them both back to her flat. Splinching be damned. His wife feels too good and looks too happy in those precious minutes after.

"Happy New Years, Gins."

"Happy New Years, worrywart."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French dark wizards are some over-the-top, dramatic sons-of-bitches!!!  
> \-----  
> Rather than give up her mum's name Jean entirely, Hermione added "D'Arc" as in "Joan of Arc" because she's a little shit in this one.  
> \-----  
> French noble houses have a system like actual European nobility where there were lords, dukes, earls, counts, sheriffs (descending order of importance) and most actual knights were minor nobles who maintained their status above peasants by military service to actual families with large holdings. While French Light wizards (e.g. Beauxbatons, the Delacours, most of the other Veela) have renounced nobility with extreme prejudice except in having multiple middle names and curtseying, most of the Dark continue using the names and titles, backed by money even though they no longer hold meaning in law.
> 
> Any "Ancient and Noble House" is a Lord/Lady house in either Britain or France.  
> Any "Proud and Stalwart House" is a lesser, Sir/Madam house under the wing of a greater one. Most are focused on military protection, assassination and and enforcer work and exist under sponsorship of the Ancient and Noble Houses. The vastly healthier French wizarding economy means that if a house like this is willing to bet everything, then it can gather Malfoy level money.


	4. No Such Thing as Ready

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Hermione really hopes she can handle this....

**Isle of Man - Saint Dessica's Home for Overly Sexed Witches - June 1, 1966**

"Name?" the orderly asks.

Hermione sets her handbag on the desk. Her wand is arranged carelessly inside it so that the staff can see it's construction, length, and obvious luxury. For the purposes of her ruse, she took a male form. Plausibly Harry's brother or cousin but not an identical twin. It's hard studying metamorphmagus skills because as far as she can tell, no one's ever even written a diary of it. Ironically, her parents and their love of teaching her the scientific method was the key. Crossing her eyes just so and holding her breath widened her jaw. Standing in an odd cramped way narrowed her hips. Bit by bit she made a male-ish shape (she didn't try to figure out how to change her breasts) that combined with some brutally tight underlayers and padding make her broad shouldered and narrow hipped _enough_ that with the facial changes it's plausible.

Face or body hair turned out to be too tricky to even attempt, though she did have quite a lot of fun with the hair on her head and the hair on her mound while experimenting.

She can pull off being a clean shaven young man. As long as no one makes her hang around more than twenty minutes or so.

"Hermione Malleus Jean D'Arc Granier, of The Proud and Stalwart House Granier."

"Purpose?"

"I'm here to take custody of Bellatrix Black. She's been claimed for marriage."

"Wait here, please."

She drums her fingers on the cheap formica. It looks like a muggle asylum retrofitted in a hurry. Charming posters like 'a wet witch is a wicked witch' and 'don't forget your sealing cream' and 'lickers will be lashed' tell her exactly what kind of place this is. It's where men of means dump inconvenient daughters. A magical version of a thousand shitty, corrupt mental institutions in the 1960s that would give a quick icepick lobotomy to unmarry-able girls for a stack of bills.

"I'd like her file, too," Hermione tells a nurse behind the counter.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Sir."

"Oh, it's just...your name..."

"More common in France."

"Of course," the nurse replies with a smile.

She hands over a file.

Harry has it easy. He's still got an _completely understandable_ hard-on for Narcissa. From the pictures in the paper as they were being dragged out of their home at 12 Grimmauld, Narcissa has always had that hourglass figure, that plushness, and those mouthwatering breasts. She's a bit slenderer at the hips pre-pregnancy, at least in a paparazzi photo.

Harry also never spent six days writing in agony under Narcissa Malfoy.

Hermione did exactly that with Bellatrix Lestrange , prevented from sleep and alternated between actual torture and listening to Bellatrix fuck the only other female death eater--some slag from Poland--into a whimpering, boneless heap. This might be where it all breaks down. Hermione might come face to face and as she practiced a hundred times on dummies, draw her wand and vaporize her before she loses the element of suprise.

A breach of the auror records aided by a few hundred galleons showed her current criminal record is clothing theft, assault (during said theft), two bar fights and in one bizarre case, duck-napping. Which is punished remarkably harshly in the wizarding world. Given that the duck was found alive, _confundus_ -ed and wearing two bras, three shades of lipstick and with bright red knickers around it's neck. A Knockturn alley whore actually had the chutzpah to step forward to claim the underwear, claiming it had gone missing and even filing the paperwork charges to retrieve them as a tax deductible expense with the ministry.

The violent lunatic stole a duck and played dress up with it. 

So it seems Bellatrix has never been exactly _right_ in the head.

Neither has Hermione, if she's being honest with herself. For almost three years, she'd starved herself for one week whenever she got less than a 100 on a test and twice she took a sewing needle and pricked her hand to make the shame her bullies heaped upon her go away. Direct the pain into easier to understand forms.

That's what got her caught.

Her parents got her the best muggle doctors they could and had her medication owled in. Hogwarts took all the bullies away except Malfoy, who for all his bile and slurs lacked the creativity of a heartless teenage muggle girl.

She checked with Pomfrey once. In the magical world, she's just _high strung,_ because they treat trauma with memory softening spells and they cure phobias with therapy that puts pink ribbons on the spiders and properly tinted contacts can make psychotics see _acceptable_ things that aren't there and just come off like Luna Lovegood if she lost the plot. Not that Luna _can_ lose the plot, that's the difference. Mediwitches can cure cancer. They can regrow a limb that's smashed to strings. They can usually regrow a spine or barring that, put in a clockwork spine that helps one walk by followings one's wishes and daydreams. They can take a person in a state of emotional shock that would render them vegetative and walk them out of it gradually using dream-altering potions and charms to process it while asleep..

They're so far ahead of muggles on _emergency_ care it boggles her mind. They're utter shit at chronic conditions. Things that won't kill you, don't make you stronger and can make life suck.

Hermione flips open the file and pulls out the copy of the DSM-IV she nicked from her therapist's office in the lead up to the end of the war. Her muggle training--extensive CPR and first aid, and parents practically funneling her into medical school--might be all someone could get to get them into the hands of a real professional. So when she was cramming several tons of necessities into her enchanted handbag, medical tools and books went right in.

She starts with 'bipolar depression' because if she's _really fucking lucky,_ that's all that happened. Bellatrix was manic and needy and clicked with someone who used her fearlessness and her energy as a weapon while stringing her along by showing her a minimal amount of affection when she swung down into depression.

Lithium is commonly available in muggle psychiatry in 1966 and despite being ancient, remains a front line drug in her own time because it works despite having more side effects than the fancy stuff. Hermione will eat her hat--which she did not bring--if Bellatrix doesn't have some massive attachment issues given who Cygnus is.

What she's most afraid of is that Bellatrix actually is a sociopath. That's manageable but not treatable. Easy to call her one from one brief nasty encounter but a dedicated sadist and an anxious, desperate wretch who wanted nothing more than a mass murderer's love and attention would torture and laugh while doing it. More likely to laugh than a sociopath actually. Sociopaths don't enjoy things.

Bellatrix isn't eating much. Barely sleeping. Spent four sleepless days trying to turn floor tiles into galleons, convinced she could do so without a wand.

So far, so good. Manic cycle.

She tried to chew her hand off because it was where too much light was coming in and she'd 'be like bad tea' when it mixed with her dark magic. Unsettling, but neither here nor there. Psychosis. Additional diagnosis of anxiety, paranoia or OCD...lots of possibilities.

The weight chart is interesting. She's been here less than two months and she's gained nine and then lost fourteen, at the same time she was barely sleeping. Surge, crash.

Bipolar depression seems to fit. If the only other one is OCD then they can swap tips and tricks on that one. They'll get along brilliantly. 

The field is young and stumbling out of an unethical period but hopefully Hermione can find a muggle psychiatrist who's not absolute stone ages compared to the treatment she got as a girl. Maybe have Harry take her as the 'concerned husband' with Bellatrix aware that Hermione's with her.

**(Harry?)**

**(Yeah, Hermione?)**

**(About to meet Bellatrix.)**

**(Wow. How can I help?)**

**(No idea. May need to you nudge Narcissa for clues.)**

**(Soon as they put me in the room with her, yeah).**

**\-----**

There's good news and bad news.

The good news is that Hermione doesn't lose her mind instantly. Doesn't reflexively kill anyone. It probably helps that Bellatrix's zig-zagging black hair is in a semi-orderly curtain around her porcelain face and she looks exhausted. Bellatrix the Death Eater looked at all times like she had eight to eighty espressos coursing through her veins. If this is a monster, it's a monster so worn down as to be no threat.

The bad news is it's the same person. Shorter, paler, thinner--probably malnourished, actually--but it's the same person. She can see how more food and more energy could turn this into Bellatrix.

The face. Sharp jaw. Violet eyes. Prominent nose. Small mouth with plump lips. Her violet eyes are just as glinting as before but only when Hermione can catch them, which happens only once when one of the orderlies tries to grab a clearly-drugged woman in a nearby chair and Hermione slams the nine-pound DSM-IV tome down on his fingers hard enough they crunch. She didn't think before doing it. This beast she's turned herself into _struck_ with a confidence at raw hand-to-hand that she can't remember training on. Memory crumbs from the soldier whose body this had been?

Death Eater Bellatrix would probably have clapped and asked Hermione to hurt him more.

This one curls in on herself, trying to protect her face between her knees.

_She's the abused who hasn't yet flipped to abuser._

"Apologize to the lady and piss off," Hermione tells the orderly.

He does.

Hermione turns to a sniffling, shivering young woman--younger than her real age by a full year--and reaches out to take her hand. Bellatrix jerks back and then forces her hand back out into the open. A pureblood daughter grinning and bearing it. Overriding her own wishes so that the man--far as Bellatrix knows--gets what he's paid for.

Her gut churns. 

She had prepared ten plans. Written out six of them complete with branching flowcharts.

She had not been prepared to _fucking feel sorry_ for Bellatrix Lestrange. 

She was not prepared to feel like the scary one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this story, it's canon that no one is born irredeemable. Shit happens to them. This is Bellatrix at 15. The book/movie Bellatrix is 40-47 in the canon.


	5. Race the Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where a frayed yarn can either tear or be braided again into a new rope ten times as strong.

**Harry - Isle of Man, June 1 1966**

Now he's seen everything. Hermione's quick, nearly-non verbal warning via their _llegimens_ link that she was safe and could handle Bellatrix hadn't prepared him for this. Not one bit. 

Bellatrix looks worse _now_ then she did in the photos in Azkaban. She looks like an inflatable doll with half the air out. She's underweight, listless and huffing Hermione's leather jacket as she jerks in what looks like a waking nightmare. She met Hermione an hour ago but seemingly being a person with no bad history and a nice smell puts her high up on Bellatrix's list.

At least in the wanted poster, that spitting, snarling, glazed-eyed woman had energy and her body had obvious power and fitness in the way her corded arms yanked at the chains and the way her wide, brilliantly violet eyes bored straight at the Daily Prophet's camera man like she couldn't decide whether to fuck him, kill him, or eat his face. That, or she couldn't decide what order to do it in.

This Bellatrix makes him want to sent the muggle police to Cygnus' house, _imperiused_ to arrest him for child molestation and take him straight to jail. None of that bother with a judge. Fabricate the nastiest possible story about what he did to his little girl. Filthier the better. Dump him in lockup with all the meatheads with 'mom' tattoos and stacks of letters received from their daughters on the outside.

He abused Bellatrix, clearly. In what manner doesn't really matter.

"This is a muggle chemist's," Narcissa whispers against Harry's neck.

Harry, for once, got the easy job. Eleven years with the Dursleys and seven since then, he never got the easy job. He did this time. Narcissa is snuggled up against him, her long legs splayed over three cheap plastic chairs. A tome he snatched at random from the Black family library is open on his lap and every now and then, she taps his thigh to ask to turn the page. Not _entirely_ at random. The book smelled of ripe peaches, pickled cherry and honeysuckle. A pleasant but eerie scent. Dark. Leading the mind to fruit that must be eaten tonight before juicy and succulent becomes fermented and fly-covered.

The last time he'd smelled it was shot through with peaty leaves in the Forbidden Forest when a sprig of blonde hair fell over his face and a whisper passed his skin with one question. A secret in exchange for his life.

> _Is Draco alive?_

The book left carelessly on a library counter at 12 Grimmauld smelled of peaches, cherry, and honeysuckle. He's not sure what language it's in, exactly. Latin mixed with some sort of runes every other word. Narcissa's eyes sparkled when he offered it to her.

Harry has a skittish tabby cat who really will do damn near anything for a tickle behind her ear. All he has to do is figure out how to make Narcissa feel good with no real time limit. Hermione has five days to turn this Bellatrix--not fit to survive an attack from a rat--into a creature who can deceive Voldemort to his death.

Hermione has a wounded tigress to care for. One sold twice. In addition to marriage to Rudolphus Lestrange, daddy dear offered her specifically for breeding to Voldemort. If the note tucked in her file is any indication, Voldemort expects her at Riddle Manor in six days. Ready to seed, the contract says. For a quarter-million galleons and 'rights to the second or the chaff' which is standard language saying that if twins happen, the female twin or the younger son belongs to the woman's family not the man buying her. He can't buy love, but can buy a pureblood little girl dragged into his chambers against her will.

"Why?" Narcissa asks. "Why a muggle chemist's?"

"The wizarding world doesn't have a potion for this. For what's wrong with Bellatrix. Muggles do."

"Oh. Well there's no fixing it, is there?" She asks. "Half-headedness just takes a firm hand, that's what papa says. Hold her down, drag her up. Probably why papa was sending her to Rudolphus. Hard men, the Lestranges."

"Half-headedness," Harry groans, pinching his nose.

He knew what bipolar disorder was when he was nine because he had a teacher go on leave, come back and when asked, she chose to explain what happened to her to the entire class rather than falling on her own privacy rights.

Later, he would realize that such an honest confession from the young woman with her career dangling on a thread was a sort of bravery equal to what Neville displayed in the Courtyard against Voldemort. At least in the wizarding world, demons have psychical form and can be _destroyed_ once and for all. Stand up. Draw the sword, wave your wand, take your shot. 

Win or die. Either way, the problem you have tomorrow will be different.

Hermione's disguise a man lasted as long as the fence of the hospital before the broke it, clearly exhausted. Narcissa's eyebrows shot up and Bellatrix's gaze locked on Hermione's neck in an unsettling way. If one sister was more eager than another to try out another woman, Harry bets it was Bellatrix. 

Hermione's pale fingers with their blood red polish drum a steady beat in the formica of the counter. Just like how Harry's hands fall behind his back like a soldier in parade, Hermione's mannerisms tend towards the contained. They time-turnered back a year to drill on combat before heading to pick up the Black sisters but this isn't stuff they learned. They practiced wandless and wordless magic, dueling, and increasing the power of their shield charms, blasting, slicing and fire curses, and using their swords and knives. Harry never learned how to stand at parade rest for a general. Hermione never read up on how to make an explosive potion but she caught herself almost adding dragondung powder to some everburning lamp oil she was brewing. Because she _just knew_ it would make something a hundred times more lethal than dynamite.

Some part of the soldiers who once owned these bodies is still inside them and Harry does not like it one bit.

The girl tending to the prescriptions so late at night has that oddness that makes Harry wonder where the line between witch and weirdo really is. This girl could be on the Knight Bus and no one would look at her _twice_ for her muggle clothing.

Gray blouse that was probably white before it faded. One angel earring, one earring like a farmer's plow. Red ribbon around her throat. Eyes that don't seem to do anything _but_ focus far away and yet she smiles when she comes back wit the drugs. Pink lipstick. It's a deliberate look and the message seems to be 'I am odd and shabby'.

"Six month's supply, miss," she tells Hermione. "First two weeks liquid till your daughter acclimates. Do you need the pharmacist to go over anything? I can ring him."

"No, thank you."

As she walks away from the counter, Hermione's wand drops from her sleeve.

" _Obliviate_ ," she whispers, aiming it behind her.

She sits down in the empty seat between Harry and Bellatrix.

"That necessary?" Harry growls.

He wants to say _what the hell_ but in this world, he's a dark wizard. Necessary evil is his family business.

"Pharmacy pad was valid and all doctors have shit handwriting so of course she accepted the signature. If someone ever tracks it, can't have her remembering who handed it off. I only took the hour since then."

Sure enough the girl is lifting the record player's needle to restart her Bing Crosby album at the track it was on when they came in.

"Bellatrix?" Hermione asks.

"Tired," she whines.

"I know, dear, I know."

**(Crashing?)**

**(Yeah. Lucky I got her out before. Any more weight loss could have permanent consequences.)**

**(You're an evil witch with a gentle heart, Hermione Granger.)**

She takes out one of the cups, shakes it and turns Bellatrix's face towards her.

"Open, please," she jokes, tapping her finger to Bellatrix's lips.

True to form, Bellatrix snaps her teeth. A momentary reminder that this is the same person.

"Bad kitty," Hermione jokes, flicking her nose.

She lets Hermione pour the drug down her throat.

"Don't feel any different."

"Muggle potions like this take a week," Hermione explains. "Sometimes even three. At least they don't taste as bad, right?"

"Right."

Harry scoops a drowsy Narcissa into his arms like a great stuffed animal and carries her out to the car they stole. When they found themselves in a muggle village and wandless the Black sisters suddenly found the world around them fascinating rather than filthy. Harry supposes it's like a forbidden fruit. Whatever their pureblood parents said they couldn't have is interesting and they have more reason than most teenagers to hate their parents.

Hermione follows, having scooped up Bellatrix into the same sort of bridal carry--much to the bother of a vicar stumbling back from his outhouse--and lays her in the blankets in the back.

"You do realize you boosted a _hearse,_ right Harry?" she jokes.

"Large engine. Sturdy frame. Compartments for the coffins. Space to sleep," he shrugs. "And aren't you a witch? It's thematically appropriate."

She lays Bellatrix beside an already-sleeping Narcissa and they tangle into each other like kittens in a box.

Rather than wake their traveling companions, Harry reaches out through the link.

**(What next?)**

**(Bellatrix is worried she can't marry me with Voldemort's price on her.)**

**(Interesting...)**

**(Don't you interesting me, Harry James Potter! I know just as well as you how odd it is that that _disappoints_ me.)**

**(It's cute!)**

**(You just want to defile the maidenhood of the fair Narcissa.)**

**(Your thoughts are quite loud, you realize? I don't think those toys have been invented in 1966.)**

**(Prat.)**

**(So we come up with a plan?)**

**(Fake him out. The woman walking through that door has to be Bellatrix Black. Tom's not stupid.)**

**(He's a half-blood with fanatic purebloods he's hoodwinked. He'll check** **bloodlines at the door.)**

**(But he won't check bloodlines on servants or muggle hostages. With this wand, I can transfigure a face fast.)**

**(I'll just make a Bellatrix double and put her in the room with Tom.)**

**(He's got one Horcrux. The snake. I popped through Knockturn and discovered that with this last name, we can just** _buy_ **basilisk venom. Among other things that we shouldn't be able to buy.)**

**(Let oil all the blades with it. I'll send you a signal when he's...cooling off.)**

**(You kill the snake. He'll have that period where he's loopy, like during the battle. Take him when he's weakened.)**

**(Kill Voldemort before he loses the stiffy. Grosser thing to think about than having my wand up a troll's nose.)**

**(Sometimes I wish I just looked for Neville's toad on my own, you know that? Never bothered you and Ron on the Express)**

**(No you don't.)**

**(No, I don't.)**


	6. Sex Work, Street Meat, and Yew Trees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Hermione is NOT screwing around, not all brothels are created equal, there's a job opening and the sacred trees are easy to find but hard to RSVP for.

**Esme - Knockturn Alley, June 3, 1966**

She's run this brothel for sixty years. Today is the first time she's gone from morning to lunch without seeing a customer. The girls are bored--even the ones who she kidnapped--and the veterans have flocked to that Danish girl. Probably part veela, given the way even the whores who whine about sucking cunt flock around her. Anya's a nasty, scheming twat. Well aware Esme can't whip her and afford to eat and three times cleverer than a girl with her tits has any use for.

Her whores seem to have broken off into twos and threes, playing cards and chess and dice games with one another. By dinner Esme will have a wizard's chess team and an empty bank account. If she doesn't put out the good pillows on Esme's bed, she may get a knife to the neck.

It's the first week of pre-Hogwarts shopping and the proud fathers aren't slipping away from their used up cows to get their wands oiled, or bringing their sons in for a _superior_ product before they get cornered into something by that bleeding hearted bitch in Hogsmeade. Rosmerta doesn't even charge for a fuck, rumor has it. Just picks an older boy she likes now and then.

She always lacked spine for this business. That's what made Esme go solo.

By now, she's eliminated the competition. Witch-whoring is either a solitary pursuit or a factory floor. No in-between. The next-nearest brothel is in York.

The Abraxan on Diagon Alley proper doesn't count. She's never been, but it sounds dull as death. Keeps a license. Thinks that no matter how lowly the bitch's pedigree, mounting costs five galleons, if not far more. Sells food and rents rooms to sleep after. Someone checks the girls for injuries before _and_ after, they offer half-breeds, they offer boys...they don't even bribe the aurors!

Esme's baffled how they're in business.

The suns in the sky but no one's seeking out whores. Damned un-natural, is what it is. Dark magic, probably. Darker than Knockturn's used to, that is.

She hauls the potioner's kit out from behind her ledgers and lights a flame. If a lust potion were to _happen_ to find its way into the pipes of ice cream and sweet shops on Diagon by midnight, hours before hundreds of families sweep through? Certainly the aurors wouldn't hold _her_ responsible.

\-----

Brewing the potion is harder than it has any right to be. She's sweaty and sticky and after the first attempt melted her eyebrows, she had to look it up, which is just fucking embarrassing for Esme. She brewed her first lust potion when she was nine but apparently the skill fades with disuse.

Now, she just needs some idiot to pour it for a few galleons. It's just before dinner, so the thugs behind the bins and the Redcaps in the awnings won't have scared everyone off. The grindylow-on-a-stick man is hard at work, grabbing another one of the shrieking beasts with the tongs, dunking it headfirst into the mandrake oil, and tossing it in the pot.

Standing not far from the cart, looking around in confusion, is a lad of eight at most. No urchin, but not so well dressed as to turn down ten galleons for two minutes work.

"Boy!" she calls.

"Yea?"

"I'm Sirius!" he chirps, holding to his small and probably filthy hand to introduce himself.

"Brilliant," she huffs.

She hands out fifteen galleons and the vial.

"All yours. Go buy something at Florean Fortescue's. Give that to Sarah, behind the counter. Tell her E gave it to her."

He shoots her a salute.

"Yes, ma'am!"

\-----

Everything hurts. Her vision is hazy and the wet trail on the side of her head suggests less-than-magical causes for her headache.

"Tsk-tsk-tsk."

"Wha?"

"Trying to use innocent children to deploy illegal potions into public water supplies..."

_Fuck, aurors grabbed him._

"...all because you didn't want your girls to have a day off!"

"Paid for 'em," Esme spits out. "Need to make a return."

"That enough, Anya?"

" _Ja_ ," the giantess huffs.

"Then the business is yours now. Maybe scrub it down a bit?"

"Definitely," the veela sniffs.

"I found my papers!" squeals one of the girls--the Latin bitch--to a peal of excited giggling. "I can go home!"

"Now, then..."

A heavy stool lands on the floor with a WHAM and Esme puts everything she can muster into making her eyes work.

The woman who is questioning her _looks_ like an auror--lean, black-clothed, alert--but aurors don't usually wear knives. Especially not knives with blood on them. She's personally stalled enough investigations with her throat and cunt to know the auror handbook. Esme is fairly confident aurors aren't allowed a pair of pet vampires.

"Where are my manners?" the woman questioning her laughs, brandishing her wand. The damned thing looks more like an obsidian _club_ than any other wand she's seen.

"Hermione Granier, of the Proud and Stalwart House Granier. We work for the Rosiers and as it so happens, you skipped out on a contract with the Rosiers in 1921."

"Rather than take it out on your girls, we're invoking the indenturing clause. We're taking _you._ "

_Fuck._

* * *

**Hermione - Devonshire, England - June 8, 1966**

Dark magic and human experimentation have advantages, Hermione has learned. Any of the proto-Death Eaters stupid enough to try to take revenge on their master's behalf can be gutted with a wandless slashing charm.

Her new body could probably carry Bellatrix a mile before she even felt heavy. Hermione's enhanced senses can feel her fiancee's magic tickling outwards, investigating her own. Best of all is how her llegimancy makes her aware that Bella's looking forward to a hands-on investigation of her magic and her body.

"Hey," she whispers into the shivering woman curled into her. "You were so brave. You stood in the room with absolute evil and made a choice. You were naked, bathed with the sort of magic your body craved most and you said 'no' and came back to me."

"You're proud?" Bella whimpers, like she can't believe it.

Cygnus Black is dying an excruciating death, Hermione decides.

"So proud. You were amazing. I think I'm in love."

Bella's slim hand curls around Hermione's neck.

"Tonight."

"Tonight what?"

"Marry me, tonight. Cissy and Harry can get married too!"

"I don't think the Wizgamot or Merlin's Keep takes same day requests, love."

"Fuck them," Bellatrix scoffs. "We're witches, Mione. All we need is midnight, a yew tree, and strip of braided white oak bark..."

She presses her hand over Hermione's where it grips her hip.

"And two hands, forever shall they be tied."

\-----

For some reason, it's _impossible_ to find a suitable yew before midnight. This part of England, there's one of the Goddess' Trees in every third or fourth churchyard and most of them older than modern wizarding. Over and over, they are blocked.

Road construction.

Downed power line.

Muggles shooting heroin.

Muggles having a shag.

Piss-drunk muggle bachelorette party. Harry has to use a puking jinx on one of the girls when she decides to nibble on the toxic leaves.

A couple of sleek wizards, maybe seventh years, honing their buggery atop a tombstone. Hermione feels Harry's mind tighten through the link, like he's considering it, until one lad pulls the other in for a kiss bright as the surface of the sun. Harry's vampire--who they've named "Rom"--makes an unhappy whine at _not_ getting to join the fun, only to melt into Harry's side while Narcissa's hand clamped on his shoulder from Harry's _other side_ enforces the hierarchy.

They pack it in for the night when they spot an immense yew tree that stands lonely on a windswept hill. Guarding it are a pair of faeries. They're not a sort Hermione's familiar with but they _are_ faeries, with their glowing rainbow irises, their golden hair swishing like an annoyed cat's tail and their sparkling teeth peeking from raspberry pink lips as they smirk.

"They look friendly," Narcissa observes. " _Too friendly."_

"Yeah," Harry mutters. "That's how you end up a footnote in Brother's Grimm."

"More like second draft," Hermione replies. "Other ways people got themselves killed in the woods that they saved for Volume 2."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ceremony is a few chapters off, once they settle on guests and a venue.
> 
> Hilarity ensues! Someone actually _sues _! Close calls! Horny Black Sisters!__
> 
> \-----
> 
> What? You thought Hermione's sacrificial hooker she and Bellatrix used to kill Voldemort at the beginning was some poor victim?!?!?

**Author's Note:**

> ##  [ Want to see the posh stuff? Want to see future chapters early? ](https://rb.gy/b1fjhr)  
> 
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> ### Like it? Hate it? Have questions? Come holler at me about fanfic!
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